


Antonio Dawson Needs to Start Wearing a Bulletproof Vest at All Times

by karaluvsketchup



Category: Chicago Fire, Chicago Justice (TV), Chicago PD
Genre: Brettonio feels, Dawson sibling feels, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, set sometime in the near future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9829556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karaluvsketchup/pseuds/karaluvsketchup
Summary: Getting called to a shooting? Typical day in the life of a Chicago paramedic. Getting called to a shooting where your patient is your ex, who you still have feelings for, who is also your partner's brother? Um...





	1. Chapter 1

61 gets to the scene after another ambulance and about half a dozen police cars, and with Sylvie carrying the jump bag and Gabby bringing the portable oxygen tank and monitor, the two paramedics hurry toward the door of the restaurant they’d been directed to. According to what dispatch told them, it’s a police shooting, one officer and one suspect down. “Shooter’s right over there, our guy’s in the kitchen,” a uniformed police officer tells them as he lets them into the building.

Chout is working on a guy with three or four bullet holes in him, and normally Sylvie would expect to see his typical Chout grin when he sees her and Gabby, but instead he gets this weird worried look on his face. “Dawson… the officer in the kitchen is your brother.”

“What? How bad is he?” Gabby demands.

“I don’t know, better than this guy, but he has a GSW to the chest.”

Gabby looks to Sylvie, a question in her eyes, Sylvie nods, then Gabby says to Chout, “We’ll take him.”

“You know treating an immediate family member is against protocol…” Chout protests.

“Don’t worry about that, we’ve got it.” Gabby says firmly. Chout still looks skeptical but he gestures for them to go past him.

They walk on into the restaurant’s kitchen. “Over here!” another policeman says as they pass through the doorway. Pulling their gloves on, Sylvie and Gabby hurry over.

“It’s my guardian angels.” Antonio’s voice is weak, but he’s conscious at least. And Sylvie suddenly realizes that while she’d considered the pros and cons of Gabby treating Antonio, she hadn’t quite gotten as far as thinking about how this would be for herself. Oh well, she can keep it professional until they get him to the hospital, and worry about her feelings later.

“We’ll take over,” Sylvie tells the other paramedic. "What do you know?"

“He has a through and through GSW to the right arm and one to the chest, no exit wound, decreased breath sounds on the right.”

“Thanks.” Sylvie says. The other paramedic nods, and Gabby takes over putting pressure on the chest wound while Sylvie puts an oxygen mask on Antonio.

“How’re you feeling, Antonio?” Gabby asks.

“Not so hot,” he says.

“Just try to take deep, easy breaths, okay?” Sylvie tells him. He nods and she gets her stethoscope and listens to his breathing, which does sound pretty bad on the side of the gunshot wound. Gabby lifts up the gauze and takes a look.

“This needs an occlusive bandage.” Gabby tells her partner.

Sylvie reaches into the jump bag and hands Gabby the bandage. “You do that then get a full set of vitals, I’ll take a look at his arm.” She cuts off the sleeve of Antonio’s jacket and shirt and sees that the bullet went through a couple of inches above the elbow. The bleeding isn’t too bad, but from the location of the entry and exit wounds she’s worried that the bullet might have hit bone on the way through. “Alright, Antonio, your arm doesn’t look too bad, we’re just going to wrap it up before we get you out of here.” Sylvie asks one of the officers to go get a backboard out of the ambo, then she bandages Antonio’s arm as Gabby hooks him up to the monitor.

Once the officer comes back with the backboard, they get Antonio onto it and out into the ambulance. Gabby goes to climb into the back of the ambo but Sylvie puts a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “You’re driving.”

“Brett-” Gabby starts to protest, but Sylvie stops her.

“I’m the PIC, and he’s your brother, so I need to be the primary,” she tells her partner. Any other day, she’d never pull rank on Gabby like that. But it’ll be better for everyone involved if Gabby’s not the one in the back of the ambulance.

“Fine.” Gabby tells Sylvie. She kisses Antonio on the cheek, tells him to hang in there, and goes up front to drive. Sylvie makes sure the gurney is secured how it’s supposed to be, and starts getting a bag of saline ready so she can start an IV.


	2. Chapter 2

“You doing all right?” Sylvie asks Antonio once she has her IV supplies set up.

“I miss you.”

“Um… if you still want to have that conversation when you’re not in shock, we’ll do it, okay?” Sylvie says. Antonio just smiles, or maybe smirks, behind the oxygen mask and shrugs, then winces from the movement.  _ Trust Antonio Dawson to be all cute even after getting hit by two bullets _ , Sylvie thinks, then reminds herself that she needs to focus on just being a paramedic right now. “Just concentrate on taking nice easy breaths, I’m going to put an IV in,” she tells him. She gets the line in without a problem and hooks it up to the bag of saline she’s hung from the ceiling of the ambulance.

“Just a few more minutes and we’ll get you to the hospital,” she reassures him, glancing at the monitor and not particularly liking what she sees.

“Brett, how is he?” Gabby asks.

“O2 sat’s down to 91 on 10 liters, if his breathing gets much worse I’m going to need to intubate.”

“Do you want me to pull over so you can do a needle decompression?” Gabby asks.

“No, it doesn’t look like a tension pneumo, what he needs is a chest tube so just get us to Med as fast as possible.” 

“Okay, we’re three minutes out.”

Sylvie moves to the seat at the head of the bed and gets the bag-valve mask and intubation kit out in case she needs them, but she’s hoping that they’ll get to the hospital before it gets that bad. For now, she just needs to wait and monitor. She puts her stethoscope back on and listens to Antonio’s chest again. His lung sounds are about the same as they were at the scene, maybe a little worse. She puts a hand on his shoulder. “I thought your new job was going to be safer.”

Antonio looks up at her. “I got shot… working at... Intelligence... too. And Vice… before that.” he says, having to pause to take in a breath every couple of words.

They’d never talked about that, though she had noticed the faded but unmistakable scars during their relationship. “Well, you made it through those times, you’re going to be fine this time too. Just keep breathing deep, you’re doing great.”

Antonio doesn’t say anything, but he looks at Sylvie like he knows that she’s trying to hide how worried she is. She meets his gaze for a second, but it’s too much for her and she has to look away, her eyes going back to the monitor instead. When she looks back down at his face a few moments later, Antonio’s staring at the ceiling of the ambulance instead of at her. Well, he’s keeping calm, which is no small achievement in his condition, and he’s still breathing, which is what really matters.

Yes. Focus. This doesn’t have to be any different from any other time that she’s transported someone she knows, and there’s been plenty of those times. Hell, she and Jimmy were the responding paramedics the night Roman was shot and…  _ No, wait, that’s not worth having a deja vu moment about right now, Sean and I only hooked up the one time. _

Anyway, they’re now less than two minutes out, Antonio’s still conscious, and his color has improved a little with the IV fluids. Sylvie has every reason to believe that he’s going to be okay. She takes Antonio’s blood pressure again, glances at the monitor, and goes back to watching him for any new signs of distress. Those last two minutes are long but fortunately uneventful, and finally Gabby pulls the ambulance up to the entrance to Med.

Maggie meets them at the backdoor of the ambulance, and as they roll into the ED, Dr. Halstead comes jogging up with Clarke at his heels.

“PD in the house!” Maggie announces. “You’re going to Trauma 3.”

“What do we have?” Halstead asks.

“Gunshot wounds to the right arm and right chest, no exit on the chest wound, arm’s a through and through.” Sylvie fills him in. “GCS 15, BP 112 over 78, pulse 114, sats in the high 80’s.”

“Right here.” Halstead says as they get to the door labeled T3. Sylvie and Gabby steer the stretcher in next to the hospital’s bed, surrounded by medical staff as Maggie keeps all of the CPD guys who followed them into the ED, out of the room. “Let’s get x-ray in here stat, and page Dr. Rhodes. Transfer him on my count - one, two, three.”

The two paramedics help lift Antonio from the ambulance stretcher to the hospital bed, then Sylvie starts rolling the stretcher out, but Gabby turns to Halstead. “Will, I want to stay.”

“You can stand right outside and I’ll keep you updated.” Halstead says firmly but kindly before he starts listing off orders to his nurses and medical student.

“Come on.” Sylvie prompts, and Gabby helps push the stretcher out into the hallway. Once they have it somewhere where it won’t block traffic, Sylvie pulls Gabby into a hug. “He’s in good hands.”

Gabby nods and sniffs. She’s managed to keep her composure until now, but now that the crisis is out of her hands, she’s very understandably starting to break down. Sylvie’s afraid she’s not far behind Gabby on that front. “I should call Boden,” Sylvie says, pulling out her cell phone with one hand while keeping her other arm around Gabby. She talks to the chief for a minute, and he tells her that he’s putting Ambulance 61 out of service so both of them can stay at the hospital. Sylvie relays that to Gabby.

“Good… that’s good.” Gabby says.

“I’m going to go move the ambo, okay?” Sylvie tells her partner. 

Gabby nods. “See you in a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing will probably be about 7-8 short chapters, and I'll try to get one out every day until it's done (now that I've said it, I'll actually do it, right?).


	3. Chapter 3

Sylvie moves the ambulance to where she can leave it for a while, and has a little cry while she does that. When she gets back, Gabby’s gone and the room’s empty, but Jay Halstead and Erin Lindsay are there, as well as Antonio’s boss from the State’s Attorney office, Peter Stone. Maggie sees Sylvie walk back in and doesn’t wait for her to ask. “Antonio’s stable for now, they went up for a CT scan.”

“Thanks, Maggie.” Sylvie turns to Antonio’s current and former coworkers. “Do you guys know what happened?”

“He went to talk to a witness, and apparently a cousin of the defendant in the case followed him in there and started shooting.” Stone answers.

“Antonio managed to keep the witness safe, returned fire and hit the shooter three times. Shooter’s in surgery, may or may not make it,” Erin adds.

“So… that’s it?” It seems too simple, like there should be more of a story to why Antonio has a hole in his chest.

“We’re looking into whether the guy was acting alone or if his cousin sent him.” Erin says. “But yeah, that’s pretty much it.” Sylvie nods.

“We heard that you and Gabby brought him in, are you okay?” Jay asks.

“Yeah, I guess so, thanks.” Sylvie says. “Uh, I should go finish the run sheet, I’ll see you later.”

“Of course, don’t let us keep you.” Erin says.

She goes back toward the entrance of the ED to where there’s a free counter space and spends a few minutes on the paperwork. Then, with that done, she’s wondering what she should do next when Casey comes through the doors with the rest of 81 behind him.

“Hey, how is he?” Casey says as he hugs her.

“He was shot in the chest and arm, but last I heard, he was stable.” Sylvie fills everyone in. “He’s getting a scan right now, Gabby’s up there somewhere.” 

Casey nods and heads toward the elevators as Stella hugs Sylvie. “You alright?”

“Yeah.  We should get out of the way… waiting room?”

“Good plan.” Herrmann says. 

The five of them go stake out a corner in the waiting area, which is already mostly full of people with CPD badges. “Wait,” Otis observes as they sit down. “I thought Antonio didn’t work for the Chicago PD anymore.”

“He worked there for a lot of years, and anyway, you know Antonio, you don’t just stop caring about him.” Sylvie says, then she catches Stella giving her a look. “What?”

Stella shakes her head. “Nothing.”

After a few minutes Dr. Halstead comes in and tells the room that Antonio’s condition is serious but stable, and that there probably won’t be another update until he gets out of surgery, which will be at least a few hours. The CPD uniforms start thinning out after that. Jay, Erin, and Stone come sit down in a row of chairs near the Firehouse 51 group.

“We were just talking to Antonio,” Jay tells them. “He looks pretty good.”

The firefighters all say things along the lines of “that’s great!” but Sylvie stays quiet, wanting to go in and see him too but knowing she probably shouldn’t try. Antonio’s going into surgery any minute now. These three were in there because they’re investigating the shooting. Gabby and Casey are probably with him now, because they’re family, of course they get to be there. But Sylvie’s just someone he dated for a few months, dated, past tense, now she doesn’t really have any more claim to him than Otis or Mouch.

A little later Antonio’s other coworkers at the State’s Attorney’s office, Anna Valdez and Laura Nagel, come and join the group, and shortly after that, Gabby and Casey walk in.

“Hey, Dawson.” Herrmann says gently. Gabby gives everyone a half-hearted smile and sits down next to Sylvie.

“They just took him to the OR. The surgery itself should just be a couple of hours if everything goes according to plan.”

They’ve been in this waiting room for far longer than that, on numerous occasions. “That sounds like good news.” Sylvie says.

“Yeah, mostly. There’s some concern about the location of the bullet, it’s really close to an artery, I guess. Rhodes says he doesn’t want to leave it in, in case it shifts, but pulling it out’s going to be tricky.”

Sylvie squeezes Gabby’s hand. “Dr. Rhodes is a great surgeon, Antonio’s going to be fine.”

Gabby nods. “Yeah, I think so. I just hate this, I hate how it feels like deja vu.”

“Yeah, Antonio said something in the ambo about getting shot before?”

“Twice in two years, the second was maybe six months before you started working with us. That time I didn’t see him until he was in the ICU recovering, but the first time I was a hundred feet from him when it happened.”

“Wow, Gabby, I’m sorry.” Sylvie’s few moments of intrusive thoughts about Roman earlier are nothing compared to the memories this is probably bringing back for her partner.

“He recovered fully both of those times, though, so hopefully his luck holds out again.” Gabby says. Sylvie nods in agreement. Antonio’s going to be okay. He has to be.


	4. Chapter 4

The group lapses back into silence for a while, until Casey gets a call for 81 over his radio and the five of them have to rush out.

“I should probably get the ambo back to the firehouse,” Sylvie says to Gabby after they leave “Boden’s going to want to bring in relief paramedics since there’s still fifteen hours left in our shift.” 

“Yeah, go, I’ll be fine here.”

“You want me to bring you back a change of clothes?”

“Sure,” Gabby agrees. “Oh, but I should warn you, Laura’s bringing Eva and Diego…”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t come back?” She can’t really be mad at Gabby right now, but…

“No, no, I just thought you deserved the warning.”

Sylvie really didn’t need another thing to worry about, but she still wants to be there. “I’ll be back.”

“Good.”

It takes an hour to drive the ambo back to 51, get it cleaned out and ready for the relief paramedics, update Boden on what’s going on with Antonio, change out of her paramedic clothes and grab a change of clothes from Gabby’s locker, and drive back to the hospital in her own car. When she gets back to the waiting room, Sylvie hands Gabby the bag with her clothes and sits down next to her. “Any news?”

“No.” Gabby answers. “Soon, hopefully.”

“Anything on the police front?” Sylvie directs at the row of detectives and lawyers in front of her.

“Nothing solid yet,” Jay says. “We have a few different angles we’re working. If there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”

The room lapses into uncomfortable silence again, and Sylvie is starting to wonder when Laura and the kids will be there, when they walk in. Laura’s eyes go to Sylvie, and she doesn’t look happy to see her there, but before she can say anything, Gabby jumps up.

“How about you two go sit down while I talk to your mom?” She says to Diego and Eva. Gabby and Laura go into the hallway to talk, Diego takes the seat right next to Sylvie, and Eva takes the seat next to him. Sylvie gives the two of them a little reassuring smile, but stays quiet, knowing most things she could say would just make things worse. She’s not sure whether Gabby’s just giving Laura an update, or talking her down so she doesn’t blow up at Sylvie in front of the kids. Honestly, it’s got to be at least a bit of the latter. And Laura’s going to walk back in and see Diego sitting right next to her.

So she runs away. Well, doesn’t run, but says she’ll be right back and gets up and beelines it for the nearest women’s restroom. Once she’s there, she goes to one of the sinks and splashes some water on her face, then stares at herself in the mirror for a minute. “Keep it together, Brett,” she tells her reflection.


	5. Chapter 5

When Sylvie gets back to the waiting room, Laura’s in Sylvie’s old seat next to Diego, and Gabby’s sitting by Eva. Sylvie takes the seat on the other side of Gabby, a much better place for her right now. She catches Jay and Erin watching her sit down then sharing a knowing look, but no one says anything about it.

Sylvie mostly stays miserably quiet as they continue to wait, and the rest of the group carries on some light conversation on and off, dispelling some of the tension that builds in the room as the two-hour surgery time stretches out to three. Finally, Rhodes comes in with some news.

“We just moved Antonio into the recovery room, he’s still on the ventilator, but he’s doing okay.” Rhodes tells them.

“You were expecting to have him out of surgery an hour ago, did something go wrong?” Gabby inquires.

“His blood pressure started dropping after we removed the bullet, and it took some time to locate the source of the bleeding and repair the damage,” Rhodes explains. “Obviously not what you want to happen, but it was a possibility we were prepared for, and he should only improve from here. He’ll be sedated and intubated until at least tomorrow morning, but he can take some visitors in about another hour, once he’s settled into ICU.”

Gabby nods, and Jay says, “Thanks, man.”

Gabby gets up and talks to Rhodes privately for a minute or two, and several of the rest of them get out their phones to pass on the latest news - Erin calls Voight, Stone calls the State’s Attorney, and Sylvie calls Boden. 

And then they’re all just waiting again for a while, though this time at least the time estimate ends up being accurate. After almost exactly an hour, they’re allowed to go see Antonio. The ten of them head over to the ICU, but only two or three at a time can go into the room itself.

“Dr. Rhodes said we should keep the visits short, like five minutes, tops,” Gabby tells everyone. “Eva and Diego, do you want to go first?”

“Can we?” Diego says.

“Yeah, just remember what the doctor said earlier, that your dad’ll be sedated and intubated?” Diego and Eva both nod. “It’ll be a little different from when you’ve seen him in the hospital before, he still has a tube to help him breathe, and they’re giving him meds to keep him asleep for a while,” Gabby finishes.

“We can handle it,” Eva tells her aunt.

Laura goes with the two teenagers as far as the doorway to Antonio’s room, and Diego goes straight in, while Eva hangs back next to her mom for a few moments before entering the room. They stay in for a few minutes, then Laura tells Gabby that she’s going to take Diego and Eva to get something to eat and the three of them leave. Jay and Erin take the next visit, and then Stone, Valdez, and Nagel. Then it’s just Gabby and Sylvie left.

When they walk into the room, Gabby goes straight over to kiss her brother on the forehead, then takes his hand - the one on his uninjured side - while Sylvie lingers by the foot of the bed. Antonio looks pretty bad - paler than he’d been in the ambulance, arm splinted, bandaged, and propped up on a pillow, and of course the endotracheal tube and all the other medical paraphernalia needed to monitor and stabilize his condition. The surgery was harder on him than the initial injury, Sylvie knows this, but she also knows that it’s only temporary, that he’s fully expected to pull through.

Sylvie glances over at Gabby, and, noticing her friend’s eyes starting to fill with tears, steps over and puts an arm around her shoulders.

Gabby swipes at her eyes. “Antonio.” She says. “I’m going to tell you this again when you wake up, but maybe you should think about wearing a bulletproof vest, like, at all times.”

Sylvie gives Gabby a half-hearted smile. “He’s going to be fine, you know Antonio’s as strong as they come.”

Gabby nods in agreement. “I just hate this.”

“Me too.”

“I’m glad you’re here, though. He’ll be glad to know you were here, too.”

“You think so?” Sylvie says skeptically. “I’m not acting like some clingy ex-girlfriend who’s using this to, I don’t know, budge her way back into his life?”

“Is that what you’re trying to do?” Gabby asks.

“Well, no… I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I,” Gabby says firmly, and Sylvie feels bad for even bringing it up. Right, she’s trying to be in supportive friend mode.

“So, are they going to let you stay in here?” Sylvie changes the subject.

“Yeah, I’m an immediate family member, and I think Rhodes knows me well enough to not try and stop me.”

“That’s good. I’ll stick around for just a little longer and then let you have your privacy.”

“You don’t have to rush out, Brett.”

“I’m not going to.” The two of them go quiet for a few moments, just watching Antonio, watching his chest rise and fall as the machine does it’s thing, before Sylvie speaks again, this time to him. “You know, Antonio, you’ve got a lot of people who care a whole lot about you, and you’ll always be able to count me among them. With all the good thoughts and prayers coming your way right now, you’ll be back on your feet in no time. And of course you’ve got Gabriela Dawson as a sister, you can’t do much better than that.” She reaches over to where Gabby’s holding Antonio’s hand and squeezes both.


	6. Chapter 6

“You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” Sylvie mutters to herself as she walks out into Chicago Med’s visitor parking lot. Well, she supposes she could stay at the hospital for a while longer, but not in Antonio’s room and she feels like she’s spent enough time in the waiting area. She considers going back to the firehouse, since that’s where most of her friends in this city are, but it’s after ten, and the day’s been emotionally exhausting enough to leave her feeling physically exhausted as well. So home it is.

She gets to her house and realizes that she hasn’t eaten since lunch, so after putting down her bag and taking off her shoes she heads to the kitchen to heat up some leftovers. She remembers the spaghetti being great two nights ago when she’d made it, but it seems mostly tasteless now. After choking down two thirds of it, she dumps the rest in the garbage, sets the dirty bowl in the kitchen sink, goes into the living room, and flips on the 11 o’clock news. It’s a good distraction for a little while, until -

_ “Coming up next on NBC 4 News at 11, a State’s Attorney Investigator was injured in a shooting this afternoon when…”  _ Sylvie quickly turns the TV off. She supposes that it’s not surprising that a cop being shot in a public place made the local news, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the distraction. Should’ve turned on Food Network.

Instead of trying again with the TV, she decides to go to bed. 

Lying down feels good, but actual sleep doesn’t come easy. She tosses and turns, considers getting up again, considers calling or texting Gabby, considers calling or texting Stella, or Cruz, or someone. She’s not sure she’ll manage to sleep at all, but eventually she does drift off.

She manages several hours of semi-restful sleep, until she wakes up at about 7:30 and knows that she’s probably not going to get back to sleep any time soon, so she gets out of bed and makes coffee instead. Figuring that Gabby will also be awake, she sends a text.

_ Hey Gabby, hope you’re doing alright. Just wanted to know if there’s any update on Antonio. _

A few minutes later she gets a text back from Gabby.

_ I’m ok. Antonio’s a little better than last night, doc says he’s ready to extubate in the next few hours. Don’t really know when he’ll be awake. If you want to come by the hospital today anytime is fine. _

She texts Gabby back and says that she’ll be by later in the day, then she gets another text, this one from Stella.

_ Are you at home? I’ll bring breakfast after shift. _

Actually, that sounds like exactly what she needs: a friend to talk to, someone who isn’t as close to all of this as Sylvie herself.  _ Yeah, I’m at home and I’d love that. _

Stella knocks on Sylvie’s door an hour later with a bag full of food from a diner near the firehouse. “Truck went back to the hospital for a little while last night, but you’d already left,” she tells Sylvie as they open up the food on her kitchen table.

“Yeah, I stayed around long enough to see him for a few minutes, but I didn’t want to stay too long.”

“I get that.”

“I wish I could just drop all of my own stuff and be there for Gabby, you know? But she was never really comfortable with my relationship with Antonio, and I felt like maybe I was butting in where I didn’t belong.”

“I don’t think Gabby felt like you were butting in,” Stella reassures her.

Sylvie shrugs. “It’s just complicated. The important thing is that he’s going to be okay, though.”

“And let’s not forget that you had a big part in that, Brett.”

She would have to give more of the credit to Antonio himself for stopping the shooter even after being hit by two bullets, and of course to Dr. Halstead and Dr. Rhodes and everyone else who worked on him once he got to the hospital. When it comes down to it, she’d spent five minutes in the back of the ambo with him and five minutes on scene before that. Oxygen, IV, bandages to slow the bleeding in his arm and close off his open chest wound… it hadn’t actually taken any great effort to get him to the hospital alive, but he’d needed a paramedic and she’d been the one to show up for the job. Well, one of the four. “I don’t know if I should have played that part in it. Chout and his partner probably should have taken Antonio.”

“Then... why didn’t they?” Stella asks.

“Well, Gabby insisted, and I don’t know, I didn’t have it in me to try and stop her.”

“Okay, well, I know as well as you do how stubborn Dawson is, but I also know you wouldn’t go along with it if you didn’t think the two of you were up to it.”   
  
“I thought Gabby could handle it and she did, I didn’t think about whether  _ I  _ was up to it until after we started taking care of him.”

“But you were,” Stella says. It’s a statement, not a question.

“I guess so. And the shooter was more critical, so it was better for the first paramedics on scene to stay with him.”

“See, you had more than just the personal reasons.”

“Yeah…”

There’s a bit of a pause before Stella says, “So, shall we eat?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie says. “Thanks, Kidd, I really needed this.”

“Pancakes?”

“No, someone to talk to, to get some of these thoughts out of my head.”

“Hey, anytime.” Stella smiles.

“The pancakes are great too.” Sylvie smiles back.


	7. Chapter 7

Sylvie’s not so sure about going to visit Antonio, but she told Gabby she’d come, so she does. When she gets to the hospital, she stops by the ICU nurses’ station. “Hi, I’m here to visit Antonio Dawson, is it alright if I go in right now?”

“Yeah, his daughter’s with him,” one of the nurses tells her. “Gabby and her husband left a few minutes ago but they said they won’t be too long.”

Oh. She should have given Gabby a more specific arrival time. Sylvie considers waiting outside the ICU until Gabby and Casey get back, but she doesn’t think she needs to do that. “Is he awake?” Sylvie asks.

The nurse shakes her head. “Not yet, we still have him on heavy pain medication and some sedation. He’s stable and breathing on his own, though, and doing as well as can be expected.”

Sylvie thanks the nurse and then heads over to Antonio’s room. Eva’s sitting in a chair that’s been moved forward so her knees are touching the side of the bed, and she’s reading out loud from a book. She stops and looks up when Sylvie enters the room.

“Hi Eva, is it okay if I join you for a little while?” Sylvie asks.

“Uh, sure.” Eva nods. She sticks a bookmark in her book and closes it. “I have to read this for AP English, which I’m missing since I left school early to come here, and I thought it would be nice to read out loud so he could hear my voice, you know?”

“That’s a great idea.” Sylvie tells her, and gets a small smile in return. “He looks a lot better,” she observes. Just the absence of the endotracheal tube, now replaced by just a nasal cannula to give him a little extra oxygen, is a huge improvement, and he’s also less pale than he was. His vitals on the monitor look better than the night before, too.

“I guess so.” Eva replies.

“It’s tough seeing your dad like this, huh?” Sylvie says. As hard as this is for her, she knows it’s much worse for Antonio’s daughter.

“Yeah,” Eva says sadly. “Everyone’s saying he’s going to be okay, but I don’t think I’ll really believe it until he’s awake and I can hear it from him.”

“Guess it wouldn’t help that much if I join the group of people telling you he’s going to be okay?”

Eva shrugs, then a few moments later, she says, “Hey Sylvie, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?” Sylvie says, because she can’t say no.

“Are you and my dad going to get back together?”

Yeah, maybe coming in here with Eva was a bad call. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry if I’m giving you the wrong idea by being here…”

“So that’s a no?”

“We had our reasons for breaking up, and those reasons haven’t gone away. But we still really care about each other, that’s why I’m here, I guess.”

“He was pretty messed up about it when you two split. He misses you a lot, I think.”

Sylvie nods. “Yeah, I miss him too.”

“So why not try again?”

“It’s complicated. Grown up stuff.”

“Sylvie, I’m sixteen, not six.”

“Okay I’m sorry I was being patronizing, but still, he’s your dad”

Eva’s eyes suddenly go wide as something occurs to her. “Dr. Rhodes said dad might be able to hear us.”

“Well if he can, and if he remembers,” Sylvie tells her, “maybe your dad and I are going to have a talk after he wakes up.”


	8. Chapter 8

The second day after Antonio was shot, Sylvie doesn’t go visit him.

The third day, she and Gabby and everyone else are back on shift.

Gabby and Casey get to the firehouse at the last minute before shift starts, so Sylvie doesn’t get a chance to talk to Gabby before they all gather in the briefing room and she tells everybody that Antonio’s doing a lot better, awake and talking and looking forward to being moved out of ICU in another day or two. After that and a few announcements from Boden, the two paramedics head over to start some inventory in the ambulance.

“We were over visiting Antonio this morning before we came here, and I told him I’d stop by if I have time after dropping someone at Med,” Gabby tells Sylvie. “He wanted you to know that you’re welcome to come up too.”

“Really? I mean, what exactly did he say?” Did he just say that to be polite or does he really want to see her? Sylvie’s not sure which she would rather be the case.

“He said make sure Sylvie knows she’s welcome to come visit.”

Okay, not really answering the unasked question, but then again she didn’t ask it.

Their first call of the day is a kid with anaphylaxis, and they’re closer to Lakeshore so they go there instead of Med. Then they’re at the firehouse for an hour or so before getting called to a house fire, where they spend most of the remainder of the morning on scene but don’t end up transporting anyone. They finally make it over to Med in the middle of the afternoon and after handing over a patient and the associated paperwork, they have time to go up for a visit.

“Hey!” Antonio says as Sylvie follows Gabby into the room. “I was starting to think you two forgot about me.” He’s propped up in the bed, right arm now in a sling.

“We’d never forget about you.” Gabby says, leaning over the bed to give him a hug, which he returns with his one good arm. Antonio smiles at his sister as she pulls away, then looks over at Sylvie.

“I hear you were here a couple of times before I woke up, thank you for that.”

“Yeah, anytime,” she replies. “I’m glad you’re doing better, this whole thing really scared me.”

“You were scared we’d never get our chance to try again?” Antonio says, his tone light but sincere. Sylvie feels her face go red, and she opens her mouth but doesn’t know what to say. She glances over at Gabby, who has one of her I-don’t-want-to-be-in-the-middle-of-this-thing-between-my-friend-and-my-brother expressions on her face again. “Sorry,” Antonio adds after a couple of seconds. “You can blame the pain meds for that, if you want.”

“No... I mean, I think you’re right.” Sylvie says, a little lamely. “That was a part of it anyway.”

“Nothing’s changed though, right? If anything, this should just reinforce why we split up.”

“What?” Sylvie asks. “In what way?”

“Still putting the job first, this would have been that much worse for you if we were still together, right?”

“I mean, maybe? In some ways.” Sylvie concedes. “But it didn’t make me glad that we’d broken up, not at any point.”

“Really?” Antonio says skeptically.

“Is that that hard to believe?” Sylvie asks.

“Well, yeah.” Antonio says, simply.

Sylvie and Antonio just kind of look at each other for a second before Gabby says something. “You thinking about your divorce, Antonio? That what you’re getting at?”

Antonio shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Wait, what about it?” Sylvie asks.

“The last time I got shot. The day I went back to work afterward, that was the day Laura left me.”

“I didn’t know that.” Sylvie says.

“The whole thing was really hard on her, my job had already put a lot of strain on our family, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t want me going back to work, I couldn’t not go back, she just walked out on me.”

“Wow… you never told me that.”

“There’s a lot of things we never talked about, Sylvie.”

“That’s true. But you have to remember, I’m not Laura.”

“You don’t think I know that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. And we don’t need to do this now.” She glances over at the monitor and sees that his blood pressure is up a little from when she and Gabby had walked in, not dangerously so but enough to tell her to back off.

“Can we talk some time soon, though?” Antonio asks.

“Yeah. Of course. We will.” Sylvie assures him.

Before anyone has a chance to say anything else, Gabby and Sylvie’s radios suddenly come to life.  _ “Ambulance 61, are you available?” _

“Copy that, we are available.” Gabby radios in. “Well, duty calls.”

“I’ll see you later.” Antonio says, and the two paramedics walk out of the room. As they walk down the hall out of the ICU, Gabby looks over at Sylvie.

“You look happy.” Gabby observes.

“I guess I am.” Sylvie agrees. “It’s good to see that he’s okay.”

“He looked a lot happier than the last time I saw him too, you know.” Gabby adds.

Well, if she already looked happy, Sylvie’s pretty sure she looks even happier now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Unless I decide to add more.
> 
> Also I'd like to take this opportunity to predict that Antonio's going to get shot approximately 14 episodes into Chicago Justice (so, early season 2 probably), based on the fact that that's what happened on both Fire and PD...


End file.
